New religious groups were also drawn to the whiteness of Jesus. Even Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science followers described Jesus as white. This was particularly paradoxical since a main tenet of Eddy’s doctrine was the falsehood of material matter—that there was only spiritual energy and that the physical was a delusion. One of her New York disciples, Augusta E. Stetson, wrote to Eddy in 1909, “Let me continue to follow, and obey and adore the white Christ, fall at the feet of Love, and leave behind me all that is false and unreal.” Stetson often encouraged her students to adore the
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